From both sides

I look after the news coverage on ZDNet UK, so my interests span the whole of business technology - though I do have a soft spot for Raspberry Pi, open-source hardware and emerging tech.

Karen Friar

Karen Friar is news editor for ZDNet in the UK, based in London. She has been in journalism since the last century, starting out in film journalism in San Francisco, before making the switch to tech coverage at ZDNet.com. Next came a move to CNET News.com, where she looked after west coast coverage of business technology, specialising in security. After 14 years in California and a marriage-related change of name (from Karen Said), she returned to her homeland to work at ZDNet UK and so that her husband could deepen his knowledge of the offside rule.Follow me on Twitter at @Karen_Friar

Just a quick note to let members know that we've extended the deadline on our competition to win a trip to San Francisco for the RSA Conference 2008 in April or a full pass to RSA Europe 2007 in London next month.To recap, all you have to do is post entries in our Sentry Posts group blog on security management.

Here at ZDNet Towers, we're keen to reward deserving members with a visit to foreign lands — just see our successful Blogger at Large competition. Take part in our latest contest, sponsored by RSA Conference Europe, and you could win a trip to San Francisco for the RSA Conference 2008.

The keen-eyed among you will have spotted a stream of thoughtful blogs on software development in the past few days, posted by Adrian Bridgwater. Take a look at Adrian's profile--you'll find a "Core Techs" badge at the bottom, never seen before.

It's System Administrator Appreciation Day--a reminder to thank the hard-working folks who keep it all going, and who usually only hear from others when things go wrong. To mark it, we're launching a contest gives a nod to what sysadmins deal with: We're looking for the quintessential messy server room.

We've been seeing a wave of activity that doesn't fit with the idea behind this community--that is, with its being a place where you can meet like-minded people and exchange ideas. Some is ad-related stuff covered by our Terms and Conditions, but there's also a lot of instances where people haven't really "got" it yet.

It's an industry, there's a huge annual trade conference, so it's about time they got their own glittering awards. The Pwnies, to be handed out at the Black Hat Briefings in August, will mark the successes and failures of security researchers--known to some as "hackers".

Microsoft says it's planning to release the next update to Windows--known internally as version 7 and formerly code-named Vienna--within three years or so. Current version Vista ran into so many delays and shifts in direction that it took more than five years to arrive.

The deadline for our Blogger at Large competition is fast approaching--16 July. Up for grabs is a trip to San Francisco for the Intel Developer Forum, including flight and spending spondulicks, and a high-spec Lenovo ThinkPad with Centrino Pro.

We know that many ZDNet UK members would like to be able to upload their own images onto their member profile, but we're still looking into the tools. So for now, we've come up with a workaround: Send me the image, and we'll plug it in for you.

The Service Pack 1 set of fixes and enhancements for WIndows Vista will arrive by the end of this year, Microsoft said in a US antitrust-related court filing yesterday. While it's not a firm date, at least it's an indication of how long the wait will be for those businesses holding out for SP1 before upgrading.

Or more accurately, watch as member Xwindowsjunkie gets to grips with pitting the latest test version of Windows Home Server (nicknamed the Kraken) against an open-source alternative (nicknamed Little Debbie).As you might remember, the head-to-head experiment was announced by Xwindowsjunkie a couple of weeks ago, along with a call for suggestions as to which open-source software to use.

What better place to take a lightweight, tough notebook out for a spin than the somewhat rugged Brecon Beacons? ZDNet UK member AgentK won the Sony Vaio G11 notebook in a recent competition and sent us this photo to let us see it in action.

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